Are You Experienced et Axis: Bold As Love - Vinyle mono en mars !

"Concurrent with the March 5 release of People, Hell and Angels, Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings will release 12" vinyl editions of Are You Experienced (both US and UK versions) and Axis: Bold As Love, newly struck on 200-gram audiophile vinyl. Each of these albums is individually numbered and features original artwork and sequencing.

Taken from the original monaural mixes created by Chas Chandler, Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Kramer in 1967, with all analog mastering by Bernie Grundman, these much-sought-after mixes of Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love have been unavailable for decades."

Having heard the whole new album by now as ripped by Sid Harta (thanks dude!), I can say the following:

The new AYE mono is sourced from the UK Track. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. EH used a reasonably clean copy for the majority of the recording, but had to switch to another crappy needledrop for the end of Fire. Maybe there was a stick or a jump at the end of Fire on their choice copy? Whatever the reason, the edit is a major farce. But that's not all.

Based on what I hear from Sid's rig, the EQ ranges from similar to quiet different to the UK mono. Several songs on the new album sounds much more dampened than the Track. Frankly, I don't think this is an artistic choice, but rather an attempt to disguise the whereabouts of the source material. See, the Track is a loud cutting. Even with the cleanest, unworn copies, it's bound to distort and crackle on the last three tracks of each side. So in order to get rid of those unwanted noises, they went with a combination of cutting frequencies in the 5 to 20 kHz area and CEDAR declip software (or something similar). Of course, like any other noise reduction application, this leaves its audible artifacts...

Let's look at Side 1 of the EH mono vinyl: it starts off with a fidelity that is close to the UK Track. EQ'ing is quite a bit different though; Grundman has clearly chosen to give the new version a more meaty low-end. By the time we get to Can You See Me, the sound suddenly gets very dark and anaemic (the latter is what Sid already referred to as the "alignment issue"). This is certainly not the case on the Track which retains its level of clarity, but has some notable tracking issues's occurring at this point, with I Don't Live Today and especially Love & Confusion being the worst offenders. Rather than preserving whatever fidelity there was left, EH had to work around those issue's, otherwise the "from the original mastertapes" claim could easily be rebutted by an average listener.

Side 2 follows the same pattern. May this be love has a similar high-end response to the UK Track, but with a strong low-end boost. Fire is already a touch darker sounding, and by Third Stone To The Sun we are back listening to a murky mess that bears no resemblance to the relative clarity of the UK original. Once again, it's not surprising that the shift in quality starts right here, since the UK cutting of 3rd stone is heavy on the upper-mids, and distorts easily. It's no different with the last two songs, which arguably have the best fidelity of all selections on the Track (but not on the EH). I'm truly amazed how they managed to screw this up: not only did they strip off whatever high-end information was left on their source of choice, but in their strife for "perfection" they also ruined the sound with some cheap software which give it this "poorly encoded mp3" kinda quality.

My verdict: easily WORSE than the UK Track, and light-years behind the first two Barclay cuttings.

Shame on you, EH, for releasing this essential material in the worst possible way, and for making people think that mono in general is indeed crappy.